FIFA's plan to sell World Cup stakes would have hit women's football hardest

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With youth and senior qualifiers on the horizon, Fifa’s aborted plan to sell stakes in its major tournaments would have heavily impacted the women’s game

Despite not having been deemed worthy of more than a single mention in Fifa’s 25-page sales deck to its 211 member associations on its doomed proposal to sell off stakes in the World Cup to private investors, now very expensive waste paper, it was women’s football that had found itself on the frontline in the fight for the “soul of football”.

Uefa’s statement that European national teams would not “participate in any Fifa competition for so long as these proposals remain alive, unless this proposal has been abandoned in its entirety and binding assurances have been given that Fifa will never again open its governance or competitions to private ownership”, was a bold, necessary and effective declaration of war against the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino.

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